Page 96 of Hesi-Dating
"I don't know. I'm sorry." I held up my hands. "It's not like Nosh and I were besties."
He waved a gun in my face and yelled, "Tell me what goddamned code you think Nosh would use!"
I flinched. My gaze didn't deviate from the muzzle's opening. "I haven't known much about him for almost ten years. I didn't know him well enough to guess his passcodes."
He slammed the metal box against my car. I jumped.
Mitchell yelled, "He was obsessed with you. Always sneaking off to follow you."
"He shot me. That obsession wasn't about us having any sort of meaningful thing. It was about control and our past."
"Tell me what you think he would use as a code, or I'll shoot you. The first shot will be painful, but it won't kill you. Maybe I'll shoot out your knee or a foot. The second shot will hurt more?—"
"I don't know," I interrupted. But I did have a few solid guesses.
"Take a guess." He pointed the gun at me and pulled the trigger.
I think I screamed but felt couldn't hear past my ringing ears. The glass of the passenger side window crackled into a zillion small breaks around the bullet hole.
It hadn't hit me.Not shot. Not bleeding.
I babbled, "Why are we doing this on the side of the highway with a cop looking over your shoulder? Isn't his dash cam recording this?"
"We're here because that stupid sheriff is always one step behind you. He's had your house under surveillance, you know. There's been someone watching the house or you ever since Nosh got shot."
Warmth suffused my middle. He'd done that? Even though he said he'd backed off, he hadn't left me alone. Damn it, I loved that man something stupid.
He leaned in and released my seatbelt. "Get out of the car."
"No. Can you chill for a minute while I think without a gun in my face?" I held up a hand and covered my face.Come on, Seth. Hurry up."How many symbols are in the code?"
"Nine."
"Just numbers, or is it a combination with letters?"
"Can do letters or numbers."
"How about his real name? Nostradamus."
"That's eleven letters. Can't you count?" Blinding pain whacked the side of my head. I palmed my forehead, which felt wet. Before my head cleared from the impact, he'd yanked open the door and dragged me out by my hair. "You're stalling, which means you know something."
I fell onto the gritty pavement. He ziptied my hands. I tried to ignore the pain from my scraped knees as he dragged me to the non-traffic side of the car.
Mitchell's face twisted into a sneer as if the violence excited him. "Give me possible combinations."
I couldn't think, certainly not coherently enough to spell words. Even without stress, I couldn't spell. I'd never be able to spell something nine letters long without trying to write it down. How the hell was I supposed to compose a bunch of letters for him?
ChapterForty-One
SETH
"Why is Mitchell Connor of the Red Crips riding shotgun with one of your boys on a traffic stop?" I snarled into the phone at the police chief.
"What?" Anne Finner sounded groggy as if I'd woken her up, not that I cared.
"One of your officers pulled over Joley Krieger to let a gang leader torture her on the side of the interstate. Joley is the woman who was shot by Nosh. I've had her under watch since the incident several months ago. I knew they'd come after her, but the one time I let her be… Damn it, I couldn't keep someone tailing her 24-7. The incident happened months ago."
"How do you know this is happening if no one's following her?"
